NE Publish Reptile Mitigation Guidelines
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Topic: NE Publish Reptile Mitigation Guidelines
Posted By: calumma
Subject: NE Publish Reptile Mitigation Guidelines
Date Posted: 14 Sep 2011 at 8:03am
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Looking forward to the discussion on this one... http://naturalengland.etraderstores.com/NaturalEnglandShop/TIN102 - http://naturalengland.etraderstores.com/NaturalEnglandShop/TIN102 ------------- Lee Brady Kent Herpetofauna Recorder | Independent Ecological Consultant mailto:recorder@calummaecologicalservices.co.uk - Email |
Replies:
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 14 Sep 2011 at 9:56am
I've got to page 4 and glad to see there has been plenty of input from those at the sharp end Lee 
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Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 14 Sep 2011 at 5:14pm
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Thank you for this just had a quick scan and it is 36 pages long. Got to be worth the wait though and will enjoy reading that when i get some time. Looking forward to some lengthy discussion on this too  |
Posted By: will
Date Posted: 14 Sep 2011 at 6:11pm
'in all cases, reptiles should not be translocated to sites a long distance away, say 20km' (p11)- so, not from Essex to Wiltshire then...
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Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 14 Sep 2011 at 9:17pm
Wiltshire is in Essex isn't it Will? ( )Not sure I've quite got my head around the number of survey days yet, I think I'll need a spreadsheet to calculate them. Odd February gets a 2 for adder whilst April gets a 5. Still much to take in though it clearly states that the document is fluid and can be updated.. So that being the case please change the two week settling time for refuges (refugia??) to FOUR WEEKS NE!
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Posted By: will
Date Posted: 15 Sep 2011 at 7:21am
Gemma@ Wiltshire is in Essex isn't it Will? ( ) - doh! I forgot... still, a nice parting gesture from Jim (Foster) to put this in writing before his recent departure from NE - well done Jim.
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Posted By: herpetologic2
Date Posted: 15 Sep 2011 at 9:08am
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Hi Gemma You tend to be slanted towards males at lower numbers than in April where you have usually many more animals above ground. However I do believe that seasonality is altered with location - for instance northern climes would probably have different scores in each month wouldnt they? J ------------- Report your sightings to the Record Pool http://recordpool.org.uk" rel="nofollow - http://arguk.org/recording |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 15 Sep 2011 at 5:35pm
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Yep it's fair comment Jon, visual survey in April can get more results, but 2 vs 5? I'm just a little concerned for example that some consultants will only survey in the high scoring months going against several statements in the document that they should not, or at least be tempted to not survey in very low scored months. With February being a 2 will many consultants actually use this time to identify adder hibernacula for example when they could be doing less visits later in the year? It's not always simply about high counts, understanding the habitat used has always been the key to my own consultancy work. To be fair though I've still only had time to scan read parts of the document and still need to sit down and read it all through properly.
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Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 15 Sep 2011 at 7:39pm
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yes i noticed that too! Should def be 4 weeks, not 2 weeks, but know there are some consultants who leave these down for just a week! The no of survey days = no I can't get my head around those. Think I will stick to the 10 days as a min for absence/presence surveys and 15 - 20 for population densities for the time being. Like your idea of using a spreadsheet to calculate these though, Gemma. I can see it being a problem if I am out on site and the client asks how many visits are required and I have to make a very quick calculation! Think I will still stick to a min of 10. I know that Jon won't like me saying this, but I absolutely love using Onduline and thanks to Gemma who recommended it last year. And it seems to work very well (esp for slow worms). Haven't found any mention of this in the guidelines yet, but somebody correct me if I am wrong about that. I haven't had time to read it thoroughly yetHappy reading guys |
Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 15 Sep 2011 at 7:46pm
Got to agree with that one, as noticed that July and August also get a lower score. But if the weather isn't too hot (like this year) and there is a lot of rain around (like this year!), July and August can still be useful. I think that counts in July and August can be done, providing it is very early in the morning and when the temp is good enough too (ie not too hot). Would like more comments on this, but like Gemma I've only scanned through it briefly and not sure if any other members of our team have read through it properly. |
GemmaJF wrote:Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 15 Sep 2011 at 11:41pm
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Regarding Onduline, I think it does say 'other materials with similar performance' or some such statement, I'll make a note when I read it properly. They would not mention Onduline specifically because the 'old school' consider it to be the devil. Frankly I think it is just sour grapes because they carried round big heavy tins and rolls of roofing felt for years without realising there was a far better lighter material that out performs both time and time and time again
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Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 16 Sep 2011 at 11:07am
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I'm finding the recommendations for number of survey visits quite difficult, taking a closer look. Particularly as this document is aimed at consultants, a key issue is that which has been raised of stating how many visits one will need to do beforehand. I'm sure it shouldn't be all taken as rigid and cast in stone but perhaps worthy of further discussion. Clearly there is an issue that for a presence/absence survey one will not know how many visits are required beforehand? Also the statement that presence/absence survey may be stopped once animals are detected... eer what about the species that can take longer to detect? For example my current volunteer survey, there is a sniff of adder at the site yet a strong indication of Lv being absent. So I stop now that I've detected slow-worm and grass snake? Absolutely not I'm in for the long-haul and track down those adder. I think a clear statement of how many surveys is recommended would have been possible and a lot easier to implement. Perhaps then with a weighting of months. It just seems to come across in a sort of reverse logic and I'm sure this was not the intention.
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Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 17 Sep 2011 at 7:22pm
Re the point on the statement of stopping once animals have been found, this is complete madness! Why would you stop once you found say 1 adult slow worm on a site without undertaking more survey work? For example, i did a survey earlier in the year and found 1 common lizard, I could have stopped there but then wouldn't have picked up 3 reptile species, 2 of them with exceptional populations. I had a bit of time to read through the document briefly today on my way down to a reptile site and was glad to see that they have indicated that trapping of animals should not be attempted in mid-October, and that they recommend stopping trapping in mid-September. Excellent, this is what I have been trying to get across to some people I have had to work with, who sadly don't understand that moving animals in october is highly damaging. The only point I would say about this, is that they put in under a seperate heading "additional info on trapping" rather than under "timing of trapping". Please could somebody highlight this to the authors, because otherwise it may get missed, thanks. Regarding the number of visits, I'm also finding this difficult and it also states at the beginning that the guidelines are not a set rigid of rules, and that the calculations are a guide. Still think I will stick to a min of 10 visits because I know that this works for me as well as for clients. And regarding Onduline, thanks for that info Gemma. I have found that it works time and time again and found a really good supplier too. Would recommend using Onduline to anybody. If anybody wants a good supplier who does them cheaply, pm me as I have a really good supplier who does discounts/bulk orders and would be happy to provide details to you. Will update again when I have some more thoughts on the new guidelines and looking forward to more lengthy discussions. |
Posted By: Matt Smith
Date Posted: 17 Sep 2011 at 11:46pm
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I have read through this document quite a few times now. It's good to have, particulalry with the guidance on survey timings and times. I like the definate "2 weeks for refugia to bed in" (I think 2 weeks is fine) and that surveys should take place over at least 30 days. If all sides read this then it will stop requests for "a full survey to be completed by the end of March" and planning conditions along the lines of "the area might have reptiles, so keep a watching brief during development and provide a mitigation plan upfront in case you do find them". The timings calculations are a little tricky to understand on first read, but once you have a good look at them they are ok. It will just make it harder to come up with a figure when asked on site "how long". Personally I would prefer not to have different effort for different species "that might be present on site" - it would be much easier to use the same (maximum) figure for all calcs. I can see all the pages being reproduced in every consultants report I see from now on. I think the key thing, which no one seems to have mentioned so far, is the amount of survey effort in terms of man power. All survey requirements have been increased by a factor of between 5 and 10. For a standard survey, mats per ha go up from 10 to 100, and for site clearances from 100 to 500-100. Think of it in terms of matting. At 100 mats per ha (100m x 100m) thats a grid of 10 by 10 mats. At 500 mats per ha thats a grid of mats at 4.5m x 4.5 spacing, at 1000 mats per ha they would be spaced every 3m x 3m. Thats a lot of refugia, both to lay out and service daily. When I saw the draft guidleines at the HWM a couple of years ago they were set at 50 mats per ha for surveys, but they are now 100. Personally I think this is excessive, I'd like to see some reasoning behind these sorts of figures. What this does is make every job need 10x more man hours to complete - even "little" jobs are now "big" jobs. I've been timing myself on a couple of very big sites since the document came out to see how many "mats per hour" I am doing - I'd be interested to see what other people think an "experienced herp worker" can manage, particularly over 1 day. As an "Independant Consultant", I am now looking at jobs that took 1 person a day will now need 10 people. Will we see anything but the smallest of sites going the way some GCN jobs seem to go -"Graduates - gain valuable experience surveying and catching reptiles - site clearances paid at £ 40 per day". Somehow I don't see 10x the work generating 10x the fees. |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 18 Sep 2011 at 9:55am
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It does seem excessive. No site is totally uniform and for presence absence survey 25 mats laid at carefully chosen locations has always provided me with the species onsite and also an estimate of relative population size on sites large and small. Frankly on a very large site one can only hope to 'sample' the areas at best during presence/absence survey and yet a good surveyor should still have no 'surprises' when it comes to mitigation. During a mitigation I can comfortably cover 200 mats in an 'session' (morning or afternoon weather window), so 400 in a day on my own. More than that and I need to take on extra workers. During presence/absence survey though, that will be much reduced. More stopping to record grid references (already done for a mitigation), more visual survey time put in. We have captured at very high densities of mats in the past. Frankly though it is more a case of lifting far more mats with 0 results then observing a much improved captured rate. A lot of going through the motions and it reminds me much of a job I observed where the workers where forced to work through the hottest part of the day just to cover the mats. They were of course capturing nothing at all and by the afternoon they couldn't capture what they did see because they were exhausted! I do feel strongly though the door has been left open to contribute to these guidelines, so my own view is we should all be collecting and presenting our own data and provide evidence for better guidance. In all we have to remember that despite the document clearly stating that only those with sufficient fieldcraft should be undertaking the work, the guidance is for all. Hence those with better fieldcraft may now find themselves jumping hoops to make up for those with very poor ability. I lost interest in contributing very early on because of talk of 20 visits for presence/absence and very high mat densities with the justification that not all surveyors are much good. Well give the work to those who are then!
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Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 18 Sep 2011 at 2:32pm
Noticed that it says the doc can be used by volunteers too or in fact anybody who has an interest in reptiles. i would say, however, that so far I've found reptiles to be present on every development site where I have predicted them to be present. I think that fieldworkers should be judged on this as this is not pure luck, it is a judgement of their ability to assess habitats for reptiles, and undertake surveys to a sound standard. It takes a long time to become competent in undertaking reptile surveys, and I know it took me at least 2 survey seasons under direct supervision of an experienced fieldworker to become competent. Confidence also counts too, in assessing the likelihood of reptiles being present, or assessing the quality of a habitat. Regarding the density of mats for absence/presence surveys, I've always used a density of 25 tins and never use anything less than this. Of course, once you find reptiles present, you can always increase the number of tins/mats on the site. This at least can give you an informed decision of how reptiles are using the site. I don't think there is a maximum number of tins you can have on a site, as long as you don't go over-board. For example, I know that there was a project where hundreds of tins were put out, and they only had 8 people to check them. By the time, they had got half way through the tins, the temperature was too hot to check the rest (and of course the little blitters would have warmed up and been active). So what do you here? Simple....employ more people. Or don't go over-board with the number of tins out. Regarding the density of mats/tins for capture, yes would agree that you would need to increase the number but one point which hasn't been mentioned already in our discussion is that habitat manipulation also helps capture effort. This would be creating islands of vegetation where animals would concentrate, providing this is done gradually and in a correct manner, it seems to work very well. For example, I did a recent mitigation project where we put an extra 34 tins down on a very small area (75m2 to be precise) in the area we were trapping because this is where we found the reptiles on the site. We also put down more tins/mats across the rest of the site where we hadn't found reptiles yet. I think in total we had doubled the amount of tins we had used for the survey work. For the last 15 days of trapping of a 30 day trapping programme, we started doing habitat manipulaiton and creating islands where animals would concentrate across the whole site (not just the 75m2 where we had found reptiles) and straight away we started getting much more capture effort, then we had done over the previous 15 days. As long as you are sensible and don't do this in one large sweep, it works well. Maybe not recommended for those fieldworkers who are not very experienced, but for the rest of us, yes i would def recommend using this technique. |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 18 Sep 2011 at 8:02pm
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I agree habitat manipulation is a very good technique. I keep a spreadsheet graph of capture rates during capture work and when I see a very marked reduction in capture rates (not attributed to weather, season, etc) I carryout habitat manipulation. We now do this 'in-house' (i.e. I wield the brush cutter) as trying to time it exactly is difficult so booking an outside contractor at the correct time can be an issue. We have at times been as late as the last week of a mitigation and at other times I've cleared some corridors much earlier. It really is a site by site technique and may vary on a particular site depending on habitat structure and capture rates. The only warning against it is that I have had some clients jump on the idea that we should just clear the habitat then capture. It happened quite a lot actually, so I'm now very careful in mitigation proposals regarding how I present habitat manipulation. I really don't want Corvids doing all the capture work on a project! I have seen this too many times now with some very visible projects carried out by consultancies who should know better. The only possible reason is client cost and time so please those who are guilty of this note it doesn't go unnoticed! As for experience of reptile workers, I have 30+ years in the field, 10 years in consultancy and I'm still learning. Since setting up M&G Ecology Ltd we have surveyed zero sites with no reptiles. I have also detected reptiles on the first survey visit of every presence/absence survey I have done for M&G. (and on many I detected reptiles on the day I laid the mats). As a consultant who often works as the reptile specialist for larger consultancies, I have observed that the standard for reptile survey varies from competent to downright 'useless'. Unfortunately I have no way of judging how many sites are surveyed by the downright 'useless' and therefore sites where reptiles are simply not detected when clearly they ought to be present. All I can say is that 'useless' occurs far too often and it appears many consultancies pass reptile work to very junior members of their organisations assuming laying a few mats and checking them must be 'simple'. Of course it is simple to lay a few mats, it is not simple to know WHERE to lay them WHICH day and When to check them and HOW often. There is no recipe for this, it simply comes from experience. (An awful lot of experience and leg work in fact). And just to add (not had such a good rant for ages) it wouldn't matter what the density of mats was for some of these 'reptile surveyors' because quite frankly if they arrive onsite at 11:30 in the morning on a cloudless Summer day, they are still going to get a big fat zero whether it is 25 mats or 2500 mats! I've seen this sort of thing many times. |
Posted By: Chris Monk
Date Posted: 18 Sep 2011 at 9:49pm
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I'm afraid that I have to agree with Gemma that most consultancies give the reptile work to inexperienced staff. I was asked to comment at work on the quotations for reptile surveys as part of a contract put out for ecological surveys last year on an area of long disused railway sidings. Because they might have needed extra work they had to detail the staff to be employed, job grade and daily rates of pay. For every one of the four consultancy bids I was given to look at the staff doing the reptile surveys was the trainee/newly appointed member of staff often with no previous employment experience between leaving college and starting the job and on the lowest rate of pay. The Ecologists/Senior/Principle/Partners were the ones doing the birds/bats/etc. I predicted no reptiles would be found despite my expectation that at least common lizard would be on the site and this year guess what - no reptiles were found. Luckily the project is just putting a cycleway through the site and 95% will be unaffected. Had had several other instances, too frequent to give much confidence to the results of most reptile surveys. ------------- Derbyshire Amphibian & Reptile Group www.derbyshirearg.co.uk |
Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 18 Sep 2011 at 11:07pm
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you know what, i got to agree with both of you about reptiles being given to junior members of staff as I have seen this myself in other consultancies. |
Posted By: Matt Smith
Date Posted: 18 Sep 2011 at 11:52pm
Notice the "weather window" has been amended too, from 07.00 to 18.00, with the caveat that "weather conditions must also be suitable. Personaly I'd like to see this stretcheda bit more, I have been happily capturing herps up to 19.30 this year on very hot summer days. ------------- Independent Consultant Ecologist ¦ Berkshire County Herp Recorder |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 19 Sep 2011 at 10:50am
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Yes I agree, we have run mitigation in the summer and often did the capture work later than 18.00. My own concept of a 'weather window' though is much less easy to define. It's I guess around 40 minutes on any given morning or afternoon when the mats simply produce animals. Hitting that precise window is for me what this is all about. As an example on my current volunteer survey I arrived onsite at 08.30 knowing it was a little early, found two grassies and went walkabouts before going round again to record a further two. Comparing this to my previous survey I figured it was more of an 'afternoon' site. So the next step was to go off to my flying club for lunch and return at precisely 15.00. Walked round and did a peak count for the survey. It's as hard as hell to explain this, but anyone with field experience will know exactly what I'm talking about. It's a sort of 'knowing' that only comes from years of experience. This is why we charge a 'session rate'. I might only do 40 minutes of mat checking, but I'm onsite for the entire morning or afternoon to hit that all important 40 minutes. For sure I might do other stuff like just wander around taking things in but I know exactly when the mats will produce. Some days in overcast this might extend to a 2-4 hour window and then of course during a mitigation one would work the mats until too exhausted to lift another! Going back to the inexperienced surveyors for a moment, it becomes a cultural thing, the more senior partners remember that reptile survey for them wasn't very rewarding, they then send out the junior members who haven't a clue how to survey for reptiles either. They get no or very poor results and actually believe it is normal not to find reptiles so it becomes a culture in the company to not question negative results. This is very real and I have had the opportunity in the past to put a few of these junior people on the right track. Unfortunately the problem for them is that their company charges an hourly rate. This forces them to survey at the wrong times rather than sit it out on a given day like we would for that precise window. It's a real shame because many of these peoples when they actually get to see the animals are excited as I am, but much of it is to do with how companies are set-up and run and charging an hourly rate simply doesn't fit with something which at times simply won't fit a rigid timetable. And to add (again) often this is the mechanism by which reptile specialists are undercut by generalist consultancies. As a specialist I charge a session rate because I KNOW that is what is required. Generalist consultancies regarding reptile work as 'second rate' will often charge an hourly rate to meet guidelines and carryout X visits - it really doesn't matter much to them if they find the animals or not in my experience, the whole thing becomes a 'tick-box' exercise.
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Posted By: Matt Smith
Date Posted: 19 Sep 2011 at 2:11pm
Just out of interest, the IEEM have recently published a series of "Competancies for Species Surveys", including one for Reptiles (plus GCN and other licenced species) These can be downloaded from the IEEM members section. Worth a look in terms of the comments above. If anyone can't access the site and wants me to e-mail them a copy, let me know. ------------- Independent Consultant Ecologist ¦ Berkshire County Herp Recorder |
Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 19 Sep 2011 at 4:16pm
Know exactly what you are talking about Gemma, and totally agree with your comments on the "weather window". The guidelines can outline these "weather windows" but this is never going to be enough for a newcomer to herp work or a junior member of staff. This is why I think it takes at least a couple of seasons to become fully competent as a minimum - because a handbook isn't going to give you that invaluable information And thanks Matt for that info on the "competencies" info too. I know the competencies info sheet says something along the lines of 20 hours?? for somebody to become competent in field work of reptiles, but I personally think it should be much longer than this. I can't explain it either, but maybe will try a bit later after my cup of tea. |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 19 Sep 2011 at 8:24pm
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Good luck with explaining it! I figure it as, how much cloud and what type, yesterdays weather, last weeks weather, the wind, shading at the site, national location, season (how high in the sky the sun is), in fact I haven't figured it as the list could go on and on and it all adds up to there being no single predictable time on a given day within the reptile season. All there is, is the fact there is a right time and that is when one ought to check the mats to get any sort of result. Some of us know when that is, and people with very little field experience don't and won't ever figure it out if all they do is keep getting negative results or very few sightings. A funny anecdote is that if it is too hot to wear my favourite fleece while walking around (T-Shirt weather), it is too hot to check mats. If it is too cold and have to put my coat on, it is too cold to check the mats. Funny but it's been proven often!
(No I certainly won't reveal what make of fleece it is lol) |
Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 19 Sep 2011 at 10:35pm
And the last time it rained is important too. Thank you for explaining it though! I was trying to come up with one word that would explain it all, but my head was so tired after being out in the field all day. Have you had a look at the trapping days calculations yet? Would love to know other people's thoughts on this. Still can't get my head around the survey day calculations though... Love the idea of the fleece. That is such a good indicator and makes perfect sense. My best policy is you have to think like a reptile to find one, |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 19 Sep 2011 at 11:06pm
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I agree it is all very complicated, refugia density is very high and I actually think I'm going to be forever stating to NE, "hey look we got the results, is that OK by you?". I worried about this long before the guidelines were published. They appear to be an attempt to bring people with no experience 'up to speed' but unfortunately end up forcing good surveyors to jump hoops which are not necessary. Many of the issues covered would have been better left as consultancy decisions in the case of a good consultant but unfortunately the guidelines work to the lowest common denominator. I know largely how this has come about. If in the end it will do good I'm really not sure but I hold all the same reservations I did in the past regarding much of the content of the guidelines. I can certainly see a lot of client 'backlash' in the future. Sadly I lot of it may well be justified.
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Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 20 Sep 2011 at 12:31am
A quick visualisation of survey effort required, I'm working on a more sophisticated spreadsheet application but for now here are the raw calculations of species, month, minimum effort for the widespread species:
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Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 20 Sep 2011 at 12:45am
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Problems I see immediately, 15 visits for adder in February when I can intercept practically the entire male population on a site in 15 minutes! The N/A for two other widespread species will I think mean this month will be skipped by most consultancies. (Though I totally understand the thinking behind this, that NE do not want to see a survey conducted ONLY during February). Grass snake, adder and common lizard all get a 30? Does anyone else here believe that common lizard are as hard to find as Grass snake or adder in general?? I would say of all four widespread species they practically throw themselves at me. (Well at least they are all over Onduline the minute it hits the ground )In general though now I've seen all the numbers I feel they are OK and certainly workable. We could say the 'new standard' for survey is 8 visits during April/May or September for sites which may harbor the four widespread species which is workable. I don't agree with all the weightings ( I would say for example that refuge survey for Grass Snakes in September is at least as good as May, but not a huge hike in effort required, so a minor niggle). I would have loved to have seen Onduline thrown into the mix. I'm assuming most of the data behind the weightings came from LB using tin/roofing felt? PS if I've fluffed up the calculations in the post above someone let me know, long day and late night!
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Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 20 Sep 2011 at 1:32am
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And just as one more thought before I collapse from exhaustion tonight, perhaps the above tabulated data is a little easier to digest than the worked examples in the guidelines? The addition of a table such as the one below might be acceptable?
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Posted By: Matt Smith
Date Posted: 20 Sep 2011 at 10:41am
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Hency my comment regarding the species weightings - it would be much simpler just to go with "30" as the calulation factor for all widespread species and do away with all the tables. I still think the guidelines are a good idea, in the main as a way to be able to say things along the lines of "no - we can't get this all done in October" or the like (insert your own favourite survey request anecdote here). My concern is that these will go the same way as the GCN Mitigation Guidelines, in that they become seen as "the rules which must be followed - no exceptions" (eg when doing a PCA of a known GCN site and trapping 40+ GCN per night, I am told must also do an egg search as "the guidleines say so".). ------------- Independent Consultant Ecologist ¦ Berkshire County Herp Recorder |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 20 Sep 2011 at 10:52am
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Yes I absolutely agree Matt regarding making all the widespread species 30. There is a danger here that what could have been simple has become overly complicated. I think the old system of dealing with a survey request for October of stating, "Well yes we can survey in October but if we don't find anything we'll have to do it again in April/May the following year" worked well for us in most cases. Some clients still wanted to go for the October survey, and often we actually did record a lot of animals, enough to be confident to produce a mitigation proposal. In other years clients accepted the fact that the weather windows simply did not occur and at an early stage agreed to reschedule the survey for a more suitable time. The flip side is that I'm not sure that we won't see some consultancies going through the motions of doing 13 visits in October because the guidelines say they can, and the client schedule dictates they must, in years when it is simply a waste of time due to the weather. But because they met the guidelines the results will stand. The words 'foot', shoot' and 'oneself' come to mind. I'm also fairly convinced that it will become a 'standard' in many cases to assume that slow-worm are the only target widespread species so reptile survey will be a case of placing the mats in early April and squeezing in five visits by mid May. The detection rates of Grass snake and Adder will be lower than ever. There has been in my experience an attitude that 'Common Lizards' don't count, Grass Snake are always transient and therefore don't really count, 'Adder?' never seen one so they don't count. Ah Slow-worm, yes 5 visits in April/may will be fine then. The widespread species are all hugely under recorded in much of the country so leaving the decision of which species to target to the consultant will I'm afraid in many cases result in them choosing the one with the lowest number of visits required for the given month. I would have much rather have seen a system which took the highest count for the month (8 for April, May and September for the widespread species) and use this as the recommended number of survey visits. Certainly this is the standard M&G will adopt on the grounds that there simply isn't enough existing survey data to rule out both grass snake and adder at any given site in the SE where we operate. I'm not totally against the guidelines and agree on the whole they are positive, there is plenty of good stuff there and with a little fine tuning I think they will be excellent. I do though think there should be some serious consideration given to: a) Simplifying the tables (make slow-worm 30). b) Raising the the number of survey visits recommended to the highest count for the widespread species for that month. C) Making October + Adder N/R one simply can't do 30 visits and meet other recommendations in the guidelines. Not only will it be much simpler, it will also ensure that a reasonable survey effort is put in at sites where we simply do not know if Adder or Grass snake exist.
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Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 20 Sep 2011 at 3:12pm
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Just had my second full read through the guidelines. New concerns, mitigation capture effort relies on the consultant making an assessment of the habitat suitability. This is an area where generalist consultants are often very poor at making a judgement and seem to put anything that isn't pristine heath down as 'poor' or 'sub-optimal' habitat. (See my thread on 'Breaking the Grassy Duck' for a local example of this). A classic example of this was a consultant who described the Kent marshes as 'poor reptile habitat', oh really? I would be interested to know also who is going to be keeping tabs that consultants work to the new guidelines? I'm very keen on the bulk of the information provided but the complexity of calculating survey visits, capture effort and even monitoring surveys will surely take some considerable effort to check? I cannot see local planning departments easily digesting this document and making appropriate decisions regarding whether or not survey effort was adequate. It's simple for GCN, anyone in planning can recite the requirement. Not the same case here at all.
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Posted By: calumma
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2011 at 9:08am
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Just for the record, I did not contribute to these guidelines. Whilst I agree with many of the sentiments expressed in the words, I believe the current document is a mess. There are several errors, the effort tables are unwieldy and it appears that significant emphasis has been placed on my habitat assessment workshop at HWM without any meaningful description on how very arbitrary classifications should be derived (this methodology is still very much a work in progress and I'm pretty pissed that NE jumped the gun). My view is that the folks who need to review reptile reports will struggle to understand whether survey work has met minimum standards. A set of tables and check boxes do not replace solid experience. It is easy to confirm the presence of a species, much more difficult to justify absence (commercially, within a report). I can see what the new guidelines attempt to achieve, but I honestly believe that they represent a failure and I am very disappointed that they have been published in their current form. Whilst NE claim that the guidelines will be updated based on user feedback, they said the same about the gcn guidelines and we are still waiting... ------------- Lee Brady Kent Herpetofauna Recorder | Independent Ecological Consultant mailto:recorder@calummaecologicalservices.co.uk - Email |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2011 at 10:30am
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Lee I honestly thought you had put in some input, but this was before reading through the entire document a couple of times. You have very concisely summed up my feelings regarding the document in your post above. I was at first thinking it was just me and didn't want to be over critical, but the description of the current document as a 'mess' really does sum it up.
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Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2011 at 7:44pm
And Ditto from me too. The word I was looking for the other day by the way was fieldcraft. |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2011 at 8:09pm
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Fieldcraft is indeed the word. You can't bottle it and you certainly cannot make-up for a lack of it by producing a document full of tables. I already ran into problems with a client today attempting to explain the new system for survey effort, quite ridiculous in a meeting to have to say 'I'll need to calculate the minimum effort required' where in the past I would have just drawn on my experience to provide guidance.
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Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 22 Sep 2011 at 11:16pm
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First version of a spreadsheet to crunch all the numbers. This is a very simple sheet that calculates the effort and total number of visits that would be required for a survey for all four widespread species. It currently misses out February (According to NE you cannot survey for two of the widespread species in February and count the effort) I hope at least this first version will make it easier to: a) know how many survey visits to make in each month to reach the minimum required b) quickly check if a survey has met the minimum requirement Any feedback welcome. If people want to see a version that can handle each of the four widespread species individually or combinations let me know. Also if they would like me to tackle some of the other dreadful tables in the same fashion, let me know and I'll give it a go. I think at least this first version puts things in the perspective we may look at it, such as OK I can book 5 sessions in March, how many do I need to do in May to reach the required effort? Or, consultant X did a survey with 4 visits in June, 5 in July and 2 in August did they meet the minimum effort required? It's pretty simple at the moment and explained below: uploads/21750/Reptile-Survey-Calculator.jpg">  Download the calculator here: http://www.mgeco.co.uk/Reptile%20Survey%20Calculator%20V0.1/Widespread%20Reptile%20Survey%20Calculator.xls - http://www.mgeco.co.uk/Reptile%20Survey%20Calculator%20V0.1/Widespread%20Reptile%20Survey%20Calculator.xls Usual stuff applies, if it kills your computer or if I've forgotten how to add up I'm not responsible, i.e. download and use at your own risk. |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2011 at 12:21am
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Just a note about the calculator, if one puts in 13 visits in March the Effort will show as 26. This is actually sufficient effort to cover all four widespread species (It's due to the lower scoring for Slow-worm of 25 and the low monthly rating of 2). Otherwise for all and any other combinations of visits the Effort should show 30 (or more) to be sufficient. I noticed an anomaly in that if one puts in 12 visits in March one has to make 2 visits not one extra visit in April, which we all know is a more optimal month to meet the criteria for all four widespread species. In other words because of inconsistency in the table, it's better to make 13 visits in a less optimal month than to make one of those visits in a more optimal month  Did anyone actually analyse these numbers before they were published I wonder? As someone who plays with numbers to pass the time, it sure doesn't look like it.
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Posted By: herpetologic2
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2011 at 11:25am
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Hello everyone I have heard that a select few people in the herpetofauna consultancy business were consulted on this version of the reptile mitigation guidelines. I have to say I was not one of them but I do know that a certain fresh consultant (4 years in from leaving a well known NGO) has commented on this and advocates the use of small tiny ACOs in the thousands. The thing to remember is that NE want feedback on this. Another thought these are just 'guidelines' they are not the law - no where in the legislation does it say what and should be done - the IEEM CSS and these should in the future kerb the silly reptile work which is being undertaken due to following out of date guidance and advice. Jon ------------- Report your sightings to the Record Pool http://recordpool.org.uk" rel="nofollow - http://arguk.org/recording |
Posted By: herpetologic2
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2011 at 11:30am
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Generally though surveys in March for the majority of projects is worthless as we would be dealing with the more numerous slow-worm where the optimal months for this species is April, June & September. Grass snakes - optimal months for finding animals April, May, June Adders - March, April, May then August into September All surveys need to have weather information and definitely justified when carried out outside the optimal months - for example overcast rainy weather in July - I am going to have to read through the guidelines again - i am going to enjoy my workshops next year for FSC/ARC Trust and IEEM lol ------------- Report your sightings to the Record Pool http://recordpool.org.uk" rel="nofollow - http://arguk.org/recording |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2011 at 11:53am
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You say it isn't law Jon.. how long have you been in consultancy now? Don't you know that on every project NE will say 'you need to follow the guidelines', you need to do X, 'because it is in the guidelines'. That everyone will be jumping hoops and if it happens to be a wet May we'll be saying to the client, well I'm very sorry that the weather is actually forecast as optimal this June but we'll now have to put in twice the effort and charge twice as much because the guidelines say so. In the past I've had NE try to make me conform to the Froglife guidelines! A battle I won. They will certainly be using these new guidelines and expecting people to follow them whether it is law or not. Regarding Onduline, we don't actually see anything like the 'traditional' monthly variation. In fact on most days in August the results we obtain compare well to any other month from March to October. But then we don't use hanky sized felts and I know when to check them. I have known for years that the 'traditional' good months has far more to do with results using tin then any real change in activity cycles. Long before any of this was put in print I was on the Surrey heaths observing animals throughout August. Even by mid-March tin will barely warm up on most days. By April, May, well it works OK, by July/August it gets hot so quickly that any animal using it is practically impossible to intercept because it will only be there for a minute or so in the morning and evening. Come September it is just about OK again. I'm very lucky to be able to observe reptiles throughout the active season on any given day, there is no change in activity at all during July and August. They just bask less. Onduline provides a much larger intercept window which is largely why our results are not particularly affected by the calender month we happen to be in. |
Posted By: herpetologic2
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2011 at 12:22pm
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Hi Gemma That's it it is not law - they are guidelines and it is down to the consultant to decide what they should do. If it meets or exceeds the guidance then fine if it does not conform to the 'guidelines' then you state why your survey did not meet the guidelines but of course we can assess the situation regarding a development or land use change using habitat assessments and survey work where this is required as it is not always required. We will come down to what the courts say in relation to the guidelines if at any time a reptile survey and mitigation project gets to a prosecution. I have for a long time disregarded the '7' survey visit for presence/absence and then 13 more for population estimates. We cannot determine population size without Mark Recapture analysis which is hardly ever done. It is too costly and is not really that useful. I do target important habitats when I am dealing with snakes and of course on smaller scales with lizards. Now do you think that NE and other such bodies will also be following these guidelines when they next plan to bulldoze woodland or flood farmland? If you used hanky sized onduline felts you will find very little in the way of reptiles under them as they do not work in my experience. Carpet tiles also pretty rubbish for reptile surveys in most conditions. ------------- Report your sightings to the Record Pool http://recordpool.org.uk" rel="nofollow - http://arguk.org/recording |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2011 at 12:38pm
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Sorry Jon, but on the large projects I've worked on NE have been there at every turn bleating on about the 'guidelines' and attempting to make developers jump unnecessary hoops. Yes it has to be said I've become very good at writing in reports why we felt it entirely unnecessary to follow that 'advice' provided. The point here is these guidelines are simply unworkable. Issues such a minimum effort will be questioned. Projects will be delayed because a consultant made a visit on the 1st June instead of the 28th May when it was raining, and therefore failed to follow the minimum effort requirement. I just find it appalling frankly that this is what we know have to work with. It is hard enough to get developers, planning departments etc to recognise the needs of reptiles. We now have mitigation guidelines that make it even more likely that reptiles will be 'swept under the carpet'. |
Posted By: MancD
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2011 at 5:35pm
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Hi Gemma,
Speaking as someone who works for Natural England, I would encourage you to provide feedback to NE on any issues you notice within the Reptile Mitigation Guidelines. It may be best to let the dust settle and see how the guidance works in practice first though, particularly the survey guidance. NE, Local Planning Authorities and ecologists all have to get to grips with it remember and there are bound to be a few teething problems.
I understand your concerns regarding guidance vs the law, but as Jon mentioned, provided that there are ecologically sound reasons why you haven't followed the guidance and you can explain this in your report then that should be enough. Clearly if there are problems with suitable survey conditions, it's appropriate to survey on suitable days, not unsuitable ones to meet the guidelines. Each site is different, has different habitat types and species composition and weather conditions will vary wildly across the country. It's impossible to produce a set of guidelines that will work for every situation, which is why ecologist experience and fieldcraft is vital so that you can explain why a survey is fit for purpose.
As for the revised Great Crested Newt Mitigation Guidelines, you won't have to wait much longer before these are published. Again, any feedback on these will be welcome when that does happen.
Cheers,
Duncan
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Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2011 at 7:18pm
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Hi Duncan, as you work for NE your feedback is in this thread. The document is a mess. The survey guidance and capture effort guidance is illogical, difficult to follow and of very little real world use. As for most of the other points, I've already raised them. I'm more than aware how to go about writing a report, it isn't the point. The point is these guidelines were clearly not ready to be published. I was holding back before trying to see good points, but frankly if one is going to publish guidance one really ought to do the homework a little better first and as a minimum check the numbers are consistent. The issue isn't my own consultancy work, I'm very confident that as usual we will exceed any published guidelines as we always have in the past. A typical example being 'told' by NE we needed to do 20 visits on a site when in 5 we had already exceeded the high counts in the guidance I feel that publishing the guidelines in the hope that user feedback will put them right is a little strange. Just take a look at who is commenting on this thread, hardly the run of the mill consultants is it?But what happens if I'm asked (which I often am) did consultant X meet the guidelines? I had better get to work on the rest of those spreadsheets, or should I just pass the inquiry to you?
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Posted By: MancD
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2011 at 11:07pm
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Sorry if you read my post as a criticism, that wasn't the intention at all. I don't think the intention of publishing the guidance was that user feedback would put them right, more that NE welcomes feedback on them. Hopefully, that's better than not accepting feedback! Despite it being easy to find internet forums full of discussion, it's quite rare if we get much direct feedback. It tends to be coffee break discussions at Herp Workers or IEEM meetings, or during site visits. The document has an email address in it for feedback (attached below for ease of reference) so I'd urge anyone interested to use it. The idea of a spreadsheet to calculate survey and capture effort is a good one, we've included a "Rapid Risk Assessment" and a HSI calculator in the great crested newt guidance so why not include that along with your other comments. The Science and Evidence team will be responsible for making any amendments. I work in licensing and it's an exceptionally busy time of year for us, but please let me know if you send any comments and don't hear back. More than happy to chase a response for you. Email for feedback... (technicalinformationexchange@naturalengland.org.uk) |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2011 at 7:16am
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Truth is Duncan, There is a long history of NE trying to stifle debate on particular topics on this forum I'm sure I will provide 'feedback' directly. At the moment a few us are trying to workout what the implications of this document actually are. From my own opinion as a consultant I'm seriously wondering if we should make any attempt to adopt the new guidelines or not. This is the place to discuss these issues, and though I welcome your comments I think the discussion will continue, rather than it being a case of 'suck it and see'. There is enough experience here to see the problems in the document long before attempting to apply the guidance in the field.
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Posted By: calumma
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2011 at 8:36am
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Guidelines are guidelines, but interpretation of guidelines varies between individuals. You can justify why guidelines were not followed as much as you like, but if the individual reviewing the report disagrees (rightly or wrongly) they may well request further information. Although follow-up correspondence may settle the matter amicably for both parties, the disagreement will have resulted in delay. Reptile surveys and mitigation are very time dependent. Uneccesary delays to projects can be disastrous for clients, particularly with the current economic climate. Surely this is why we all want NE to publish guidelines. We want minimum standards to be set that experienced fieldworkers agree with. If there is likely to be debate over whether minimum standards have been achieved, with constant justification for why published guidelines were not followed, then the guidelines have failed. My advice to NE is to republish the guidelines with a notice that they are draft only. Field workers should be encouraged to review the guidelines and submit feedback. However, there should not be an expectation that they are followed until a final draft is published. In the interests of fairness I should disclose that Jim did ask me to comment on these guidelines back in February. However, I had only just returned from Madagascar and had a huge amount of work to catch up on. Working as an independent consultant means that I have to manage my time very carefully. Balancing paid and unpaid work is a fine art and I don't always get it right. Unfortunately I simply did not have time to review the document before it was published (contacted as I was right at the beginning of the season). If I had done so I would have seen that the HSI work I have been working on for several years has been included by NE (albeit without any actual direct consultation with me). I also understand that the current document is the product of one or more workshops held at HWM and a wide range of folks were able to contribute suggestions. Unfortunately my oversees work means that I am unable to attend these meetings. It is unfortunate that my contribution to this discussion is late in coming, but there we go. ------------- Lee Brady Kent Herpetofauna Recorder | Independent Ecological Consultant mailto:recorder@calummaecologicalservices.co.uk - Email |
Posted By: MancD
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2011 at 9:26am
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I think that therein lies the problem. It is difficult to set standards that experienced fieldworkers agree with, you only have to read the last few pages of this thread to see that. In relation to the reptile habitat suitability indices Lee, I don't know. My main role is assessing licence applications so I have little involvement with reptiles, and wouldn't expect to be involved in drafting a document like this. The main reason I've commented on this thread is because I didn't want all the useful discussion going to waste, hence why I've encouraged feedback. Given that many consultants have significantly more field experience than me in this area you'll note I haven't commented on the technical content, more I was trying to make sure that your voices are heard rather than "stifle debate". And on that note, back to the discussion... |
Posted By: calumma
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2011 at 10:21am
I'm curious about some of the rankings in the effort tables. Here's a graph that I produced for KRAG a little while back that illustrates mean adult slow-worm encounter rates across the season (pooled for multiple years and across all available sites etc etc). Error bars left off for clarity, the graphs are just to illustrate trends.  Open circles are female, closed circles are male. Notice the significant discrepancy between the sexes. We all know this of course, but I'm curious as to why the guidelines rank survey work during August as being the same as survey work during October? Gemma has already commented on this but it is worth repeating. Experienced surveyors are better able to identify windows of opportunity for survey work. Reptile activity is driven by many factors, but taking the above graph as example an important factor affecting females is summer thermoregulation and feeding for reproductive purposes. Autumn activity is driven by different factors. All of these seasonal factors affect the detectability of animals. I believe that what the guidelines are attempting to do is to increase the likelihood of an inexperienced surveyor finding reptiles by overcompensating on the number of site visits at various times. By assuming that an inexperienced surveyor is less able to identify suitable survey conditions the guidelines assume that inexperience is compensated for by increased effort. I don't have a problem with that. But... Rather than provide tables that define effort by visits per month, perhaps the guidelines would have been more favourably received if they had defined the environmental parameters per month when survey work is likely to be most effective? Local fluctuations in weather mean that defining the number of visits per month is very problematic. Perhaps remodelling the tables based on survey periods would be better? Survey work can be undertaken to achieve many things. Confirming presence and estimating relative population size are desirable, but illustrating the distribution of animals across a site and identifying hibernacula (etc, etc...) are also very useful for conservation and commercial work. These results will of course vary by season. Clients like to see dots on a map showing where animals were seen. The more survey sessions undertaken, the more likely it is that animals will be seen in different areas. This applies to both experienced and inexperienced surveyors. The skill in writing guidelines is finding a reasonable compromise between the two. In my opinion the current effort is too heavily weighted towards the inexperienced.
------------- Lee Brady Kent Herpetofauna Recorder | Independent Ecological Consultant mailto:recorder@calummaecologicalservices.co.uk - Email |
Posted By: calumma
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2011 at 1:46pm
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I'll rephrase that last sentence. In my opinion the current effort is too heavily weighted towards providing a rigid framework for the inexperienced. ------------- Lee Brady Kent Herpetofauna Recorder | Independent Ecological Consultant mailto:recorder@calummaecologicalservices.co.uk - Email |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2011 at 8:23am
I would support this approach. With the document in its current form I would quite honestly be prepared to write in reports that we did not follow the guidelines because they are flawed and unworkable rather than explain for every single job why we didn't follow them in detail. If however they were a draft document, then I would be much more prepared to work with them and provide detailed feedback. Picking up on Lee's comments regarding how to present survey effort, tables that looked something like this for the widespread species....
....would in my mind be much more palatable. As is, the guidelines in the current format **may** suggest to an inexperienced fieldworker (or rubbish consultancy) that 15 visits to a refugia survey in February is somehow the equivalent of 8 visits in April - which is of course not the case at all. I would have no confidence in a 15 visit survey in February in terms of demonstrating absence for the widespread species of reptiles at all. It however does not mean that February should be discarded as a survey month, identifying an adder hibernaculum may well be the key to maintaining the status of the species on a site. I think Lee was thinking along the same lines, effort tables that demonstrate why one would survey at a given time and what the results may indicate, rather than weightings for each month. I'm a bit pushed for time today, and the above table is just an example of what I would like to see. I'll put together a more detailed version for the widespread species during the week which we can all comment on etc. I hope the table demonstrates that the confident surveyor may *risk* the 3 visits in March to get an early start. They may for example be confident by mid April that they have sufficient data to form a mitigation proposal. The inexperienced surveyor may well only *risk* client cost taking this approach and may be better to spread their survey visits over April and May. I think in this format we have the correct approach that the experienced surveyor with good fieldcraft is not restricted or made to jump hoops, but the less experienced can pick their survey periods in the 'easier' months. |
Posted By: calumma
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2011 at 9:42am
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Gemma, presumably your table indicates the maximum number of visits that should be undertaken per month? If so I think that this highlights one of the fundamental difference between what we as experienced surveyors attempt to achieve and what the guidelines seem to be suggesting. An experienced surveyor wouldn't try to squeeze all survey visits into a short period of time, particularly in 'off peak' months. I realise that the guidelines state length of time between visits and settling time for refugia etc, but my interpretation of the guidelines is that it is ok to undertake all survey work off peak, providing more survey visits are undertaken. Surely we should be recommending visits targeted at appropriate activity periods. Perhaps the guidelines have it right setting a minimum 'survey effort' score for each species (although to be frank, I think that 7 visits works ok as a general guide and it is unnecessary to have a 'standard effort unit'). However, perhaps there should be a maximum number of visits in certain months and those visits only count towards the total effort if weather conditions fall within acceptable ranges. If you want to count two visits in February that's fine. But if you are an inexperienced surveyor (or an experienced one who is too busy and should know better) you may actually need to undertake five visits before you get the right weather and can count two of them as being suitable. This may result in a system just as complicated for inexperienced surveyors, but is pretty much what experienced surveyors already do. The existing guidelines almost achieve this. However, they could encourage some businesses to throw resources at a project in order to get the work completed more quickly off peak. The system I am advocating puts the emphasis back on doing it properly. One more thought, this does of course also assume that something other than merely presence is required. A presence survey can be achieved in a single visit. Understanding usage of a site requires more effort with multiple visits over a longer period of time. Perhaps the guidelines should be clearer over what results are required for best practice. Perhaps a site supports grass snake, but do they lay eggs? Is the site the main adder hibernaculum for a much larger area? Does the site represent an important dispersal corridor through areas of otherwise less suitable habitat. Implementing a well designed mitigation strategy requires more than simple presence data.
------------- Lee Brady Kent Herpetofauna Recorder | Independent Ecological Consultant mailto:recorder@calummaecologicalservices.co.uk - Email |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2011 at 11:44am
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Yes Lee, absolutely we are looking at maximum visits during February/March in the table. We might have a total minimum for a presence/absence survey of say 7-8 visits for example. (I do have some problems with this approach but we are talking absolute minimum effort, for sure I might simply decide on a given site that I would need to do more. So in the table one may have a site that one suspects could support adder and say 2 other widespread species. 1 survey visit may be made February (I'm assuming that this would be in ideal weather conditions) any visit made in the wrong conditions would not count. The system relies on a positive result. If the surveyor is rubbish and can't pick the right day or time they will record zilch and this cannot therefore count towards overall effort. They either need to go again (and again) or leave it to someone who knows what they are doing. 2 - 3 visits would be made in March which could give an early indication of presence. (same understanding as above, if one records nothing at all during this month, the visits simply do not count. This would leave 3-4 visits that still would have to be made in April. Or in the case of an inexperienced surveyor, 8 to still complete during April or May. So I would be looking at a survey over the three months, checking potential adder hibernacula in mid-February, and on the same day laying mats. A couple of visits in March, might give me an early indication of reptile present. Population estimate and higher confidence in declaring 'absence' would have to wait until April. There is no room here at all for a consultant declaring that a survey carried out in February or March is evidence of absence (regardless of effort). It's really just an example of how I feel it ought to go and for sure other months may include egg laying sites for grass snakes, recording gravid animals, recording current year cohorts etc, understanding foraging distribution etc. The message is absolutely that we should have a 'maximum' for some months for specifically targeted survey, as opposed to a weighting of increased effort in months that are simply not usually optimal for reptile survey.
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Posted By: calumma
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2011 at 12:00pm
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Gemma, I think we are probably in general agreement on this strategy. What do others think? ------------- Lee Brady Kent Herpetofauna Recorder | Independent Ecological Consultant mailto:recorder@calummaecologicalservices.co.uk - Email |
Posted By: Matt Smith
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2011 at 11:36pm
Well, you could do worse than ask your technical team to look at the comments in this thread if you want feedback. As for feedback on the "revised" GCN guidlines, as with the reptile guildeline we are discussing, the main point to make it that they should both differentiate between "guidelines" and "rules". The GCN guidelines have changed over the years from being a useful set of guidelines to being a set of "rules", with EN licence assessors in particular taking examples from the original guidelines and turning them into "rules that must be followed whatever the circumstances". My concern is that these reptile guidelines will go the same way, and we will be stuck with a set of difficult to use guidelines that a lot of people don't really understand, but just do calculations by rote and come up with a magic number to "surveys this month". It needs a lot of simplification, a reassesment of some things like the number of refugia to be used, and definately the word "DRAFT" printed across all pages in big letters at present. ------------- Independent Consultant Ecologist ¦ Berkshire County Herp Recorder |
Posted By: B Lewis
Date Posted: 26 Sep 2011 at 9:44pm
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Can I also add that there is still a a lot of work going on in the background within the academic realm which should feed directly into these guidelines and as yet have not been part of the consultation process. NE have been fully aware of much of the work that has been going on and indeed have been part of it including, and not limited to, the number visits required for species encounter rates etc etc.. These, together with the forthcoming GCN guideline documents, are being rushed into production, once again without any real science to support them or knowledge base from long-standing members of the community both professional or experienced naturalists. This will always render the documents out of date before they are even published unless they acknowledge the latest research and knowledge base available. Like Lee, I would strongly suggest that the main point of feedback should be that these are clearly 'working documents' and in that sense are no more than draft guidelines. Guidelines will never replace expertise and experience in any circumstance since most contributors are not representative of those end users. We should continue to offer our support for producing such guidelines so that we can, at least, provide a baseline approach to survey design and implementation in a way that is both informative and instructive at all skills levels. This will be difficult to achieve but is not unsurpassable with the appropriate input from skilled professionals, seasoned naturalists and scientists alike. We should also remember that it is paramount that we continue to strive toward a 'best practice' approach to our work, that meets the desired outcome in order to maintain or enhance the population viability of all species that we work with. Each project will set its own demands and we should all be pragmatic about our approach in achieving that goal. I would also urge NE to view the feedback provided here together with a consultation process that includes some of the countries leading specialist groups and academic institutions in this field so that a final draft can be drawn up, together with the views of those professional who will inevitably be using this tool on an everyday basis (the most important group in my opinion). Maybe a specific symposium might be an option for this? I'm sure I will feed more into this discussion as I get chance to review the document once again and in greater detail, but for now, lets accept that it is a start and a working progress. ------------- ________________________________ Brett Lewis Consultant Ecologist | Wildlife Photographer | DICE, University of Kent | Kent Reptile & Amphibian Group |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 27 Sep 2011 at 10:30am
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I think there is an interesting analogy here to my academic background in aerospace engineering and actually flying. It doesn't matter how much sciences and maths you throw at a problem, none of it teaches the 'art' of practicing the activity. Indeed basic knowledge may well keep one out of trouble but the current situation is one of being told by effectively a 'lay person' that one isn't doing it right because it says so in the 'guidelines'. Of course ones own experiences and knowledge may suggest otherwise. This is why we still have 'August' as a poor encounter month. It dates right back to when reptile studies were carried out on the Dorset heaths using tins. Not at all applicable to a grassland site in Essex during August. I agree we need good science but the key issue is feedback from the end user. To this end I very much think NE will do well to watch and take note of this discussion rather than expect 'feedback' in any detailed form at this time. Surely it wouldn't take much to put DRAFT on each page of the document, like now NE?
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Posted By: B Lewis
Date Posted: 27 Sep 2011 at 11:13am
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Hi Gemma, As you well know I am a very active professional consultant as well as studying for my PhD at DICE. I am not a 'lay-person' by any means but think that any guidelines will be more robust if grounded in actual research rather than hearsay! A multifaceted approach to this problem is paramount and will produce a much stronger document. So often people are quite vocal and quick to say that "my experience says" or "my data shows", however much of it is unpublished an not in the public domain for peer review. So I urge you all to collaborate in an effective manor as possible and if you have some clear points and data to support a stronger document then please write it up and submit it for review along with everything else including anecdotal information. You will note that I was leaning strongly on an argument towards that of the 'End User' (myself included). This is the sole basis for what will be almost seven years of research for me on mitigation activities concerning protected species and is the basis for ongoing work, now funded by DEFRA. So, I for one, am trying to find out if what we are doing in the field is right for the species concerned together with legislative challenges and science, based on hands on field work! I understand that there are many concerns about this document but it is far better than anything we've had up until now, but still has lots of room for improvement. Let's help improve it by taking the time to draw on considerable experience, science and legislation to make it something better. Kind regards, ------------- ________________________________ Brett Lewis Consultant Ecologist | Wildlife Photographer | DICE, University of Kent | Kent Reptile & Amphibian Group |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 27 Sep 2011 at 12:31pm
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Brett, you misunderstood, I was referring to the 'lay-person' as someone sat at NE with a set of printed guidelines in front of them and no field experience who then dictates one should carryout 20 visits to a site to determine if there is 'enough for the reptiles to eat'. This was one interpretation of the Froglife guidelines I had to overcome. My own view is the new guidelines may very well be treated in the same way, when frankly there is much to be improved before such an approach would be in the least bit reasonable. Clearly I know your background very well and welcome your input to the discussion and certainly wouldn't consider yourself as a lay-person on the subject of reptile mitigation. I absolutely agree that we need the input of serious studies and not a re-hash of old anecdote. My problem is that as an experienced herp worker I cannot see in the current tables any correlation between the effort recommended and my own experience. All I can see is the unscrupulous consultant using them to maximum benefit to carryout surveys at inappropriate times, or to use the tables to determine the minimum effort/client cost they can get away with. One does have to be careful though. I'm very familiar with reading scientific reports relating to herpetology. For any amount of statistical analysis and clever thinking, the results at best apply to the study the site. Perhaps the real question that needs answering is how as end users should we provide the feedback in a scientific way that will actually stand up to scrutiny to give a clear and wide view? The bulk of the written content I welcome and agree is far better than what we have had in the past. However to have published the guidelines in the current form of presentation of the effort tables looks to me to be rushed and ill thought out. And just to clarify because I'm notorious for not being clear regarding what I'm trying to put across, I think we should have the scientific study to guide us on our way, but the guidelines should be updated by field data from a wide variety of actual sites to make them robust. How might we achieve that?
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Posted By: B Lewis
Date Posted: 27 Sep 2011 at 3:46pm
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Gemma, Thank you for clarifying that! I fully understand your angst and I do, very much, share your views. I think there are enough consultants out there that could provide survey/capture data across the seasons and in recent years as well as across a wide range of habitats in order to carry out some kind of analysis to help form a basis for this document. I know that David Sewell, here at DICE together with Richard G. & Trevor B. (Esmée Fairbairn Project) have been carrying out a range of surveys across the counties as well as numerous workshops involving professionals and land managers to glean this kind of information, which in turn will help feed back into this document. As we point out, it has been published way ahead of time! However, despite what local government officials and NE might say, these are only guidelines and until the law changes they cannot force anyone to undertake such activities. Any smart Lawyer or Barrister will tread all over that. There is still no legislation to stop unscrupulous derogation of sites unless anyone can prove that animals were killed in the process and even then your are into the realm of trespass legislation etc.. At best, the developer or land manager might get a slap on the proverbial wrist..! So it does need a multifaceted approach that will encompass our data as professionals, the data gathered by scientists and recording groups as well as a real look at the legislation and how it protects widespread species particularly at 'edge of range' habitat. I would welcome a discussion to promote better protection of our 'wide-spread' herps in general and in turn the habitats in which they encompass. Since many of them occur in good numbers on land that might otherwise be classified as poor habitat! Certainly the case in this part of the world. Thanks again and I look forward, in anticipation, to a response from NE and indeed the ARC-Trust. Kind regards, ------------- ________________________________ Brett Lewis Consultant Ecologist | Wildlife Photographer | DICE, University of Kent | Kent Reptile & Amphibian Group |
Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 28 Sep 2011 at 7:12pm
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Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 28 Sep 2011 at 7:36pm
I agree with what you saying totally. The guidelines should be best practice and this what we all need. The thing that still worries me is that there are some consultants out there who do less than the current recommended min effort in order to save money. This to me is cutting corners and not what I would call lawful. Let me give you one example: We quoted a client for a reptile survey on a relatively small site with a basis of 10 visits to determine presence/absence but stated that we would find reptiles in much shorter time and then would implement a mitigation strategy. The client didn't like this, but he found another consultant who quoted him for what we would say would be the standard half day rate. He quoted to do 1 day of installing reptile fencing and 1 day of trapping animals and moving them to another site, without any survey work. The client apparently accepted this. Now, this may sound cheaper for the client, but how can this be lawful? |
Posted By: herpetologic2
Date Posted: 28 Sep 2011 at 7:58pm
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One amendment I would like to see is to this in the intro 'This document is not intended to provide advice on impacts caused by conservation management, forestry, farming or other ongoing activities.' As far as I can see 'mitigation' is definitely required when a WT or SNCO bulldose an adder hibernacula for conservation reasons. The same sort of methods should apply to this sort of project - surveys and then a mitigation strategy to ensure that the conservation status is not harmed as a result of such a damaging operation. We all know that this type of activity can lead to local extinction of reptiles if only they had some guidance eh? The sad thing about your example is that it is a lawful operation until such a case is found to have killed animals and that a judge rules that such an approach is not reasonable effort nd is therefore illegal. In fact my favourite example is the Essex to Wiltshire translocation of 24,000 reptiles to a site which seemed to be big enough but look at the detail of the site and you will find that those reptiles were placed into a standard reptile translocation exercise except it was over 150miles. Natural England approved this and their only objection was the welfare of the animals being transported once a week in a small van! At least these guidelines will hopefully stop such large distance translocations being considered in the future. The funniest thing is the great crested newts were kept on the site along with 216,000 smooth newts. The water voles were moved to the River Colne as they were in danger of sea level rise. ------------- Report your sightings to the Record Pool http://recordpool.org.uk" rel="nofollow - http://arguk.org/recording |
Posted By: herpetologic2
Date Posted: 28 Sep 2011 at 8:04pm
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There are some nice little nuggets of hope in the guidance Planners would be justified in rejecting a mitigation proposal if it would have a negative effect on local reptile conservation status, even if the project involved no breach of the wildlife legislation. This applies to both the widespread and the rare species This must be welcomed as county ecologists tend to want to know whether a breach of wildlife legislation will occur as a result of development. We can think outside the box and actually help reptiles and their habitats. I think that would take a long time as it seems ingrained that you just do 7 visits, find reptiles, then carry out 30 days trapping plus 5 clear days, no monitoring, no follow up management etc etc The 5 clear days where does that come from? I like the idea of depletion graphs - do we ever get to 'zero' captures? I have looked back at past projects and I have to admit we did not get complete depletion - though I did manage to increase the conservation status of local reptiles through translocation of small numbers of reptiles - the follow up management and monitoring is the most important though legally under WCA1981 you do not have to do it - however under NERC and PPS and planning conditions Section 106 this will come into our work. J ------------- Report your sightings to the Record Pool http://recordpool.org.uk" rel="nofollow - http://arguk.org/recording |
Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 28 Sep 2011 at 8:10pm
Thanks . Yes i would agree the Essex to Wiltshire translocation is a classic example. |
Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 28 Sep 2011 at 8:32pm
I would say that long-term monitoring (at least 5 years) with habitat enhancement on both the development site and receptor sites is required where the impacts on reptiles is not negliglible and there is loss of habitats eg translocations. And thanks for that little nugget - that is brilliant . I think at the end of the day reptiles are getting more attention from the new guidance and recognition than they were before. |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 28 Sep 2011 at 10:10pm
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We always graph the capture rates and what is most useful is the comparison between captures and encounters. It takes as long as it takes, though one shouldn't be working in reptile mitigation if not able to get it to within a week based on survey data. We usually end a mitigation spending the last week getting off 'known' individual animals. No way am I going another 5 days if I happen to catch the last straggler I know about on late Friday afternoon. (we are still checking all the mats of course and monitoring that the capture work truly is coming to an end). This is the ongoing problem though, who decided it was 5 clear trap days, how many site clearances from how many consultancies were used to derive the figure? Or as I suspect was it just someones opinion of what was adequate? As 5 clear days could be due to the weather in the past week/month, season or site clearance, I much prefer to graph the result and trust when encounter/capture flat line at 0 from a very gentle gradient we have done all we can. Even then I'll wait for rain and check at least twice more before signing a site off. Here lies the problem, once it is in print it becomes the standard quoted by consultancies, NE, etc etc. Yet I'm not even convinced 5 clear trap days means anything during a reptile mitigation other than you didn't happen to see any for five days, there are several other possible reasons for this other than adequate site clearance!
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Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 28 Sep 2011 at 10:40pm
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Jon, I would judge that a realistic depletion for the widespread species would be 90%, having said that I've yet to see an animal during a destructive search and now largely think that for reptiles destructive search isn't necessary with adequate and properly timed capture work. I would still go through say a large rubble pile by hand, but the soil scraping activities don't really seem worth it if the capture work was done to a high standard. Glad to see the new guidelines agree on that. Good too we are now getting to discussing the positive points about the new guidelines and there are several. I actually think it is a bit of shame that we have the clumsy and dare I say scientifically dubious tables, else many of us would be openly rejoicing at the publication of much needed reptile guidelines.
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Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 29 Sep 2011 at 2:23pm
Exactly! This is my point that the 5 clear days are not conclusive enough to sign off a site, yet we are expected to by NE and others - because it is in the guidance. The 5 days are so dependent on other factors that I just prefer not to use it at all. I suppose I can see their point because you need to make a decision when to sign off a project - but I personally think it should be to the discretion of the consultant managing the project if you like said, Gemma, there has been a high standard of capture effort. |
Posted By: liamrussell
Date Posted: 29 Sep 2011 at 4:18pm
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I think the '5 days' worked its way over for the great crested newt mitigation guidelines... And I think it's actually fairly logical too, in that if you surveyed a site (using the high density of refugia you would in a capture operation) and didn't find anything after five visits in ideal conditions you could probably reasonably conclude that reptiles were absent from the site... (Ok, so it probably should be 7 visits, or is it 8? Hold on, what month is it? so maybe it's 5 for slow worms and 16.66666666 for sand lizards
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Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 29 Sep 2011 at 7:04pm
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I don't follow the logic, because one isn't visiting on consecutive days during a presence absence survey (well not a properly conducted one). Also one isn't removing the animals during a survey. During a mitigation it is quite possible to capture a large proportion of the population that happen at the time to be using mats on a given day. One wouldn't expect to suddenly see the same number reappear the next day or for several days after. We have had several mitigations where this has occurred with 0 encounters for several days before a new section of the population started to intercept and use mats. Add this to the several other possible reasons that might explain five days clear, weather season etc, one realises that five clear trap days are actually quite meaningless. Density doesn't make any difference either, there are reasons why reptiles use mats and those reasons vary during the season, during the life-cycle and for each species. Making the assumption that all the reptiles on a site would be found under mats at a given time is simply wrong. We have had situation for example during mitigation where after 3 days capture work on overcast days a very large proportion of animals using the mats at that given time were captured. The next time it rained the numbers were almost back to where it started, over 7 days later. I believe you are right '5 days' probably did work its way over from the great crested newt mitigation guidelines. I however know it isn't at all reliable during a reptile mitigation. Take this week, how many clear trap days might one have had? Several, I abandoned a survey this morning at 0930 because it was simply too hot to continue and reptiles were not using artificial cover objects. I have several times come across the '5 clear trap days' from clients and NE, frankly I've never paid the least bit of attention to it.
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Posted By: liamrussell
Date Posted: 29 Sep 2011 at 8:35pm
Gemma, I did specify that the five visits should be carried out in ideal conditions. If it's not conditions where you would undertake a survey, you shouldn't count it as a 'clear' day, therefore, all the visits you abandoned this week shouldn't be counted as clear days. With regard to consecutive visits I think it's always best to rest the site every so often. When I used to work only monday to friday, we generally caught more animals on monday (all other factors being equal). If there's lots of activity every day it must affect behaviour and perhaps reduces movements. The weekend gave new animals a chance to find the tins. I'm not at all making an assumption that all the reptiles on a site would be found under mats at a given time. I'm saying that in suitable weather/seasonal/time conditions (i.e. conditions when you would do a survey), checking under under 200 mats in a capture operation is essentially the same as checking under 200 mats on a survey and if you did that five (seven) times you would assume that the site was reptile free (especially if you are using several times the refugia density than in a survey)? Yes, when undertaking a translocation we visit the site (and capture animals) in less than ideal conditions. But, these days shouldn't be counted as one of the "five". Common sense need to be applied. If you have been getting 100s of animals every day and then suddenly you get five clear it's pretty obvious that something is going on. But if after seeing capture rates decline you see stop finding reptiles, whilst following the same protocol you used to find them in the first place, maybe that means there aren't (m)any left?
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Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 29 Sep 2011 at 8:55pm
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I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one then who doesn't like the 5 clear days. i think this has come from the crested newt mitigation guidelines and it seems to be used a lot by other consultants. It seems to be the norm these days. Killing and injury of animals should be avoided, yes but if you take out say an adder hibernation site or a grass snake egg laying site, and don't make provisions for them in the receptor area - that is going to have a much bigger impact on reptiles than moving them. And yeah too hot for reptiles today. Too hot for me too! |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 29 Sep 2011 at 9:17pm
And maybe it means that it hasn't rained for a fortnight and maybe it means it was too hot last week and maybe it means the season is drawing to a close and maybe it means the sun isn't as high in the sky as it was last month... You see my point is it can mean many things so choosing the one you want it to be is not actually common sense. I have on several occasions as I've said above heard from other consultancies and NE that 5 clear trap days is requirement. I have witnessed consultancies shutdown a mitigation on five clear trap days when I knew full well there were animals left on the site. You can use it as a common sense approach. I've yet to see any evidence it is anything but 'made-up' and used by some as a quick and easy way to bring proceedings to a close. You ever had the situation of doing for example 120 days of mitigation and then finding 14 adult grass snakes during vegetation clearance, not one of them seen under a mat throughout the 120 days? It happens. So 5 clear trap days didn't prove that all the grass snakes were caught, in fact 120 days didn't prove it either. I think also it is worth bearing in mind that when I'm posting I'm not always posting regarding what I would do, but also from what I have seen others do in the past. Plenty of consultants would be checking felts today when I gave up at 0930 and went off to do something more productive than looking for reptiles in conditions where I would simply get extremely hot and be lucky to hear a rustle in the undergrowth. The fact is I've ended many mitigations without using clear trap days and with a very high degree of confidence that any further effort would be wasted. There are other methods and our usual conclusion to a mitigation is a week capturing out the last known individuals on the site, vegetation clearance etc. I think what I'm trying to put across here is that '5 clear trap days' is one of those things that has become dogma. I have had people who know very little about reptiles quote '5 clear trap days' as the end of a reptile mitigation. It isn't too difficult for me to see that there are consultancies who tend to 'go through the motions' during capture work and will stop at the drop of hat if they have '5 clear trap days'. I worked as a fieldworker for several consultancies who took this kind of approach before running projects myself. You can bet too I was onsite all day on day 5 more than once to make sure I got something to prevent the end of the mitigation. It's the sort of dogma where for example they state '5 clear trap days' and one is like, yes, but I know I missed 8 lizards and 2 adder last week. This is why I now work the other way around, I'll go out and catch the 8 lizards and 2 adder whilst checking the ACO for any other unknown animals. When I've caught all the known animals and no other new animals have appeared, given the right weather condition over the past month, time of season, known species onsite then I might make the decision that ACO capture is now exhausted. Even then I might yet have a few more tricks up my sleeve before sign off as ACO are only one method of capture. It's been mentioned before in this thread, interpretation of guidelines can vary. Some will take 5 days clear as hint that a mitigation is coming to an end all things being equal. Some will rigidly stick to 5 days clear as indication to sign off the site without delay or further thought. My own opinion is I wish nobody had ever stated 5 days clear as I don't think it means anything. PS I edited this post quite a bit, my first version when re-read seemed very confrontational, it wasn't actually the intention. Long day. And a final PPS before a collapse from lack of sleep. Which is more logical, deciding that ACO capture is exhausted during a period when ACO are producing animals (the last known animals approach), or deciding that ACO capture is exhausted when the ACO are not producing animals (5 days clear). If one accepts that ACO may not produce animals for other factors other than site clearance, it's pretty easy to see the logic of abandoning the concept of 5 days clear all together. |
Posted By: liamrussell
Date Posted: 30 Sep 2011 at 1:34am
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Gemma, I agree with a lot of the points you make. I think maybe I just look at the "five days" in a different way. I am coming at it from a theoretical perspective in the sense of providing evidence the site is clear, rather than a shortcut to ending a translocation early (and I totally agree that happens). When you first come to a site, in order to establish the presence of reptiles you undertake a presence /absence survey to a certain standard (5 visits, 7 visits, 20 visits, or whatever is appropriate). If reptiles are present you undertake a translocation and what you want to see at the end of the translocation is a site with no reptiles. How do you prove there is no reptiles? Repeat the original presence/absence survey to ideally the same (or an equivalent) standard. This is what I have always considered the five days to be. Therefore, days where "... it hasn't rained for a fortnight and ...it was too hot last week ...and the season is drawing to a close and ...the sun isn't as high in the sky as it was last month..." are not valid. You wouldn't carry out your original presence/absence survey in these conditions so you shouldn't include these days in the "five visits". There are always going to be unscrupulous persons who will exploit the system, but this will happen whatever guidelines are put in place and I think the way you assess a site as being clear, by capturing the last known individuals is equally, if not more so, open to abuse. I appreciate that you may be able to determine a site is clear without needing to do this. But there are a lot of people who lack the skill, sense or just don't care enough to work like this. I also don't think this approach would work that well on a site with lots of different people working on it. If I were in the position of the County ecologist/NE/etc, I would want to see documentary evidence that the site was clear and five days no captures in suitable weather etc (i.e. a presence/absence survey is one way of doing this). Yes, it may take a bit of extra time and money but relative to the cost of the whole translocation this is going to be small. Although I don't doubt that your method is effective (when done by you), I don't know if the majority of reptile workers are at this level and this doesn't seem to provide enough "proof" in a quantifiable and standardised manner. I am not saying that the "five visits" is the be-all-and-end-all but, if done properly, it is one way of providing evidence to demonstrate a site is clear. As with all guidelines I would want encourage flexibility and if you could provide evidence in another form then that's great. There are many skilled herpetological consultants, but unfortunately there are also a lot of particularly unskilled/unscrupulous/lazy/uncaring ones who make this kind of prescriptive guidance necessary. This is all rather technical and to be honest I'd much rather see more emphasis and (money spent) in better planning and management of receptor sites rather than the "every slow worm is sacred" approach...
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Posted By: herpetologic2
Date Posted: 30 Sep 2011 at 9:42am
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It is about showing 'reasonable' effort in avoiding injury and death to reptiles - though of course it is also about creating and maintaining more habitat than what you started with (ideally) I have looked back at site data in the usual translocation methodology go until 5 clear days - i.e. no more reptiles Have a look at these depletion graphs  After five clear days there is still no sign of depletion - a very rough and ready plot of cumulative total and daily captures  This site was an interesting one as we got 747 lizards off the site - we included all the age classes here as they were not separated - however 500 were young or neonate animals - we would have got a depletion of adults. The destructive search revealed 7 lizards in anthills - 3 adults and 4 juvenile animals  Now look at this slowworm example on a small section of seawall - we had a rapid depletion to zero captures for over 5 days - We got over 80 on the first visit then just over 20 on the second - this represents a marked depletion in numbers - is it due to the removal of animals or extreme weather? However this sort of demonstrates that 5 clear consecutive days does not necessary mean that the population has been completely removed. I would imagine as the days are spread out to hit the most suitable conditions a depletion would arrive in the graph. ------------- Report your sightings to the Record Pool http://recordpool.org.uk" rel="nofollow - http://arguk.org/recording |
Posted By: herpetologic2
Date Posted: 30 Sep 2011 at 9:45am
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PS I totally agree with the money being spent on habitat management, habitat creation and less on reptile fencing and artificial refugia - people are chucking thousands of felt tiles everywhere and placing reptile fencing where is it clearly not needed! ------------- Report your sightings to the Record Pool http://recordpool.org.uk" rel="nofollow - http://arguk.org/recording |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 30 Sep 2011 at 11:49am
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Jon, I rather think we should be doing both! I have no problem with using a lot of ACO and fencing if I think it is required to carryout capture work to a high standard. Yet for sure there should be habitat management as well, either at the receptor site, in-situ or of course preferably both on projects where translocation is involved. I'm not keen on the approach of concentrating more on habitat management and somehow reducing capture effort. Even if one ignores the obvious animal welfare issues there is some duty surely that the consultant protects the client from prosecution under the WCA and that means putting in enough effort in capture to avoid unnecessary killing and injury of reptiles. I don't think we should sell one for the other, the message should be both are required to a high standard. I think there is room for emphasis on capture work though. For example we would now time to remove as many gravid animals from a site before they 'pop' as possible and avoid prolonged capture work of juveniles. Was this mentioned in the new guidelines? If not I would welcome a paragraph explaining the benefits of timing mitigation capture work to concentrate initially on removing gravid reptiles. Liam, I do understand your point, but I think Jon's graphs illustrate mine. If we can accept there might be other factors than site depletion for 'five days clear' then we ought to question the logic of 'five days clear' is my point. It is fair to say personally I would be kind of annoyed to be made to go through the motions of checking felts for a further 5 sessions when I already know ACO capture is exhausted - I would rather concentrate on other methods. For sure our explanations of how we end capture work have always been accepted. I think what is good is that we are discussing these issues. I would like to see more consultants encouraged to use graphing techniques, keeping logs of weather and as we do, analyse the performance of workers. I've used the last technique to move workers around a site and it is amazing how one worker can make a mitigation area look exhausted, whilst another can fill buckets from the same site the next day in similar conditions. I find these methods more robust and meaningful than five clear trap days. If we had some scientific evidence that 5 clear trap days was robust I wouldn't argue the point, I hope the discussion might make a few of us question the logic and perhaps look at finding better ways. We can then perhaps convince the less able to adopt them!
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Posted By: liamrussell
Date Posted: 30 Sep 2011 at 2:57pm
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Hello Jon and Gemma, I agree this is a good healthy discussion. I can get discussion fatigue in these circumstances but this one is perhaps worth sticking out... I have seen lots of internet discussions descend in to insults so please understand that nothing said here is intended to be personal or meant as an attack in any way. Again, both of you have in your last posts said that the “five days” could occur because of “other factors” (Gemma) and “extreme weather” (Jon). This is my point entirely, because you should undertake the five visits when these are not an issue (i.e. when you would undertake a reptile survey). If you came to a site fresh, which, unbeknown to you had been translocated, did a presence/absence survey to the high standards to which you both work and found no evidence of reptiles; would you not assume the site had no reptiles? This is why I think the “five days” (or perhaps it should be seven, but let’s not go there...) is a logical way to conclude a translocation. If the standard for a presence/absence survey was changed then I would expect to see the “five days” changed to reflect this. I disagree that Jon’s graphs illustrate the point that “five days” doesn’t work and think in fact they are in fact slightly misleading, as the assumptions underlying the basic model are incorrect. I used to (try to) use this method but it just doesn’t work. The graphs basically predict the point at which a site is clear by plotting the linear relationship between time and the number of animals caught on any given day, and looking at the point where the line intercepts the X- axis. This is fine if the data show a linear distribution pattern, but I’m sure you know that such data for reptile translocation seldom do. I agree that using capture rate graphs are good for assessing the progress of a translocation, but this is not the way to do it. For example, there are two problems with the first graph. Firstly, the spread of the data is very wide so any line of best fit will be weak and explain little of the variation (excel will allow you to display an “R-squared value” on trendlines, which quantifies the amount of variance in the data explained by the graph, and it will be very low for this one). Secondly, the median number of reptiles caught in a day appears to be “1” from this graph. This means the line intercepts the Y-axis very close to 1 and the only way to get it to drop is to catch fewer animals than the line, i.e. 0 (because I hope that nobody is catching half animals – slow worms with missing tails still count as 1 animal...). For example, if you visited a site for 20 days and caught one animal each day, in order to get the trendline to reach the X-axis you would need to get 20 consecutive visits with no captures. The second graph suffers from similar problems. Again the scatter is very wide (so the R-squared value is likely to be low) so the trendline doesn't explain much, if anything. Looking at the data, this looks typical of a site started early in the year with initially few animals caught, with capture rates rising as the season progresses. The fact that there is this cluster of data points in the bottom left corner of the graph means the trendline intercepts the Y-axis relatively low and the only way to reduce it is to capture fewer animals for more days. The third graph suffers from the opposite problem in that you have one extremely high (5x the value of its nearest neighbour) on the left hand side, with the next data points being considerably lower. This sharp drop in numbers produces a very steep trend which intercepts the X-axis too early and falsely predicts the site is clear. It you removed this first data point which skews the data so much, you would get a much more realistic model (but of course I’m not saying you should select which data you show, as this is very naughty, I’m just illustrating a point). Jon are all of these complete data sets or are they ongoing? In my opinion, the most accurate and robust way to show declining capture rates is to plot the cumulative total capture against time. This will produce a graph that increases (steeply if you’re catching lots, more gently if you’re not) before reaching a plateau. When you get to this plateau it demonstrates the site is clear (statistically, anyway), to a much higher accuracy than a linear trend. You can assess the occurrence of the plateau by eye, or you can calculate statistically if you really want to. The “five days” are important in reaching this, but if they are in the “wrong” place, i.e. without previous depletion, you can easily detect this by the shape of the graph, which will get a square corner rather than a curve if this is this case. I agree totally it is frustrating to have to repeatedly visit a site you know to be clear, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) in these days of increasing “professionalisation” in ecological consultancy we need to be able to back up our conclusions with sound conclusions drawn from evidence and data. Although you may be correct when you say a site is clear, there will lots of others who would be incorrect in the same situation and I’m sure you wouldn’t want the bulldozers to be sent in based on the say-so of several ecologists you could name (again, I want to reiterate that this is not aimed at anyone here, but I’m sure everyone could name several people they wouldn’t trust in this situation). As I said before, it may be possible to demonstrate clearance in a number of ways, but the “five days” is a useful tool in the box if used properly. I used to get frustrated too that my professional opinion would not be trusted by NE, planning authorities etc, but there are so many people (particularly in reptiles) working to a poor standard and it’s the likes of them who have devalued professional opinion. Which is a shame, but also inevitable, so now I’m just resigned to and try not to let it get me down. I also try and make sure I can provide data to back up any decisions I make. |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 30 Sep 2011 at 5:45pm
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I think in most internet discussions people have more common ground than not Liam, it's something about the medium which seems to cause the arguments. I know plenty of people on here in the real world who can come across as confrontational in posts, yet I know it is more to do with how the person reading the post is viewing the situation then the intention! They key here is 'if used properly' in my experience it isn't. My dislike of '5 clear trap days came about from demonstrations of how it certainly wasn't used properly. I agree it is important to graph data correctly and to be honest I think Jon's graph were illustrative. I can still see the points he was making though very clearly despite the flaws in the plots you mention. I don't think the average consultant has the ability to wield '5 clear trap days' with confidence. I don't think my clients when they pick-up on these things and say 'Oh you'll stop if you get 5 clear trap days, have much place in it either. To be honest I don't use 5 clear trap days during presence/absence survey either, so perhaps this is the problem. To be honest I'm struggling the remember if I've ever actually surveyed a site that didn't have reptiles.
 It would be quite a challenge for me to write a report that robustly demonstrated absence! |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 30 Sep 2011 at 6:09pm
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One more point, I'm not sure I really made it clear regarding the last animal approach. Here would be a typical example, I have say 4 juvenile lizards we keep seeing on the corner of a felt, an adult lizard which everyone has seen a dozen times and a grassy that has been spotted on reed bed 8 times but never under an ACO. Nobody has as yet been able to capture them. We know they are there and our effort moves to removing them. What happens is we keep checking the ACO until we are sure the last known animals are off. This might mean 10 negative results for ACO, i.e. more than 5 not less, for ACO not associated with known animals. This is why I then have a problem doing a further 5 to prove the point and also why NE always accept the approach. What I won't have happen is someone dictate I stop work on the arbitrary notion that 5 clear trap days is 'proof' of site clearance. When ACO are not the only way to detect animals and I know there are still animals on the site. I also don't always use the graphs just to prove site depletion, I often use them to monitor trends such as a reduction in capture rate and check to see if they are due to unfavourable weather, poor fieldworker, over working the site etc. As I said good to discuss and thanks Liam, you have given me much food for thought.
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Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 01 Oct 2011 at 12:16am
Some very valid points there Gemma, and this tends to be the problem with internet threads, or even emails, is how the reader reads into the situation. I would agree with you on 5 clear days in that it is not used properly by some consultants. What I mean by this is, the weather conditions weren't suitable on the days they surveyed, so of course it would be a negative result. This is the reason I don't like the idea of the 5 clear days. Really, the consultants involved should know better, but like Liam said, guidelines are open to abuse. |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 01 Oct 2011 at 7:38am
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OK lets talk habitat creation! Two bug bears I have, One is scale Eeer the other is scale (nope I've not completely lost the plot) I've seen so many times brash piles put in. Made up of a dozen sticks and six inches high. Wrong scale, should have been at least six feet high. Within two years it will be four foot high and ready for a top-up. Hibernacula, oh dear 2ft high on low ground. Useless, make the biggest bank possible (not less than 4ft high) and put it somewhere where it can never flood. Position with some intelligence regarding the mid-day sun early season. Utilise anything found on site to form the core, the reptiles don't care what it is made from. What else? Coppice every tree you can get away with, use the materials in-situ to make big log piles and huge brash piles in the areas which catch the most sun throughout the season. If water not present, add water. Let the grass grow, occasionally strim areas of grass and put in a large pile of clippings for grass snakes. Harvest coppice to top up brash piles, also chip some material to add to grass clippings to ensure one actually has a 'heat' producing compost heap. Figure some way to keep the compost wet, it won't work if it is dry. It really is that simple and we have done it all along. Also whenever possible take-on the future management work yourself. If you don't, expect the contractors to leave the site looking like a park rather than reptile habitat when they do yearly management. Any other thoughts? The fact is, it's all actually low cost and certainly not rocket science, this is why I get a little worried when people talk about switching the balance from capture effort to habitat creation. Reptile habitat creation does not need to be expensive at all.
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Posted By: calumma
Date Posted: 01 Oct 2011 at 2:22pm
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Liam mentioned depletion curves, which I also find a useful tool. However, one important thing to consider is that capture work often progresses throu the season on large sites and decreases in encounter rates are often due to seasonal activity, rather than actual depletion. The five clear days are problematic in this regard, because they are often due to season factors that affect activity. Justifying capture extensions across multiple years can be problematic and the five clear days occuring at the end of the season make this especially so. Must rush!! ------------- Lee Brady Kent Herpetofauna Recorder | Independent Ecological Consultant mailto:recorder@calummaecologicalservices.co.uk - Email |
Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 01 Oct 2011 at 5:41pm
Thanks for this Gemma Yeap, I always do the management work myself, because I know the job is going to be done properly. I've found a really good team of ecological contractors who also help me out, esp with building new hibernation sites. That's why we are going to be so busy this winter Actually you made me laugh Gemma, with all those examples, esp the first one. Point taken, and can now switch back to capture effort. The point I was trying to make was that there are some consultancies who don't even bother with habitat creation, let alone enhancement measures. I just wanted to raise it so it didn't get missed! Capture effort ....any new thoughts on this? The new guidelines calculation tables are just too difficult to navigate round, but thankful they have at least "recommended" a minimum capture effort. My worry is that each site is going to be different depending on local conditions and weather conditions and the min effort should be to the discretion of the ecologist/consultant. Let's face it: 30 days are never going to be absolutely spot on for capture effort in terms of suitable weather conditions and it is always going to take longer than this or as conditions dictate. My feeling is that some who are unskilled will do trapping effort in unsuitable weather conditions because they haven't got a clue, and still count it as a trapping effort day. Take today for example, far too hot for reptile work and warming up far too quickly in the morning.....I've given up on doing reptile work today because of the heat, but feel that those who are unskilled might try and do a capture effort or a even survey and still count this as a valid survey/effort day. I prefer the idea of depletion graphs, as these are much more workable and also give you baseline information. And no you haven't lost the plot! |
Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 01 Oct 2011 at 5:47pm
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Posted By: Robert V
Date Posted: 02 Oct 2011 at 6:37am
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I haven't been keeping up with this discussion except for the last two pages on building new areas;
but just an associated note, I don't know who the advisor is the Lee Valley regional park, but whoever it is are very tuned into reptile and amphibian needs.
New ponds, sawdust piles, log piles positioned correctly, over-shading willows removed, thick copses fenced off with natural copicced - type interwoven boundaries, some areas around logs strimmed for basking areas, some left overgrown, banks of stingers, over bearing banks of brambles reduced and the perimteres of new ponds planted with rooted reeds etc.
A joy to follow the progress week on week.
R ------------- RobV |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 02 Oct 2011 at 7:22am
To be honest I kind of thrive on that sort of thing. Just threaten them with a potential over run if they don't listen to you. Tell them the guidelines are a minimum, that the figures relate to little developers not development gods like themselves. Oh, yes and remind them that as long as the site has creatures with scales on it, it is yours until you say so. To be honest my view on '30 days capture' could be summed up by replacing '5 days clear' in my posts above with '30 days capture'.
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Posted By: liamrussell
Date Posted: 05 Oct 2011 at 4:50pm
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Gemma, I totally agree with you on the thirty days capture. If we are going down the clear every animal road, the only solution for me is to be able to demonstrate the site is clear, hence me sticking up for the five clear days. Anyway we've discussed that at length now.... When I said I would like to see more emphasis on habitat creation I am coming from a much wider perspective. I think the way reptile (and newt) mitigation happens at the moment is piecemeal, uncoordinated, short-term (medium at best) and extremely inefficient in its use of resources. Although individual consultants may work to a high standard, they can only be involved in a few sites and it's difficult for them to think about anything beyond site-by-site solutions. And many others are not so conscientious. This means we end up with lots of small sites which are much more vulnerable to stochastic events/genetic effects etc. So.... This is my utopian vision of how development related reptile impacts should be mitigated: Each Local Authority should have to allocate reptile receptor sites within their local plans. The sites should be planned at a county (or unitary authority) level to provide a sustainable, connected network of sites that will provide reptiles much greater chance of surviving into the future than on the individual isolated sites they so often find themselves. The size of the site network should be determined according to housing/development targets for that year with parcels of land of appropriate size (based on predicted number of houses to be built) managed to bring them into suitable condition each year, so they are ready for reptiles to be released into (needless to say these shouldn't already be known reptile sites). The sites should be identified in the Local Development Framework and consequently be subject to proper planning policies and safeguards. Now, this is all rather expensive and times are hard. However, the reptile mitigation "industry" spends 100s of thousands of pounds shifting reptiles each year which, if targeted more effectively, could do a lot more for reptile conservation than it currently does. For example, looking at capture numbers for large translocation sites I often see that initially very high numbers of animals are caught, this then slows down towards the end giving the graph a very long "tail". Going off memory rather than real figures for the moment (so feel free to disagree), in a lot of cases I would estimate that often 80% of the reptiles are captured in the first 50% of visits. Therefore towards the end of the capture operation you are getting very few reptiles for your money and time spent collecting them. So, if a decision was made that capturing 80% was good enough, think of what you could start spending the 50% (ignoring fencing etc, just capture effort alone) of the money on. If you took half of all the money spent on capturing reptiles within some counties, the counties could start employing reptile officers (OK, so maybe only part-time, but that would be good to start) with budgets to identify sites at a strategic level and then to manage them into condition, or they could employ contractors to do this. In very reptile dense counties I'm sure they could afford to start purchasing land... This would create a network of interconnected reptile sites of protected, high quality habitat with budget to ensure their long-term management. Surely this would be better than the current situation? It would obviously require changes in legislation to allow licencing and the Local Authority would need the power to charge for the licence. Standards of surveys would need to be a lot better to allow capture effort to be determined prior to survey starting. But I think these details could be overcome with some more thorough research. Is it going to happen? Or even anything resembling joined-up thinking? NO! So we might as well just knuckle down to the new guidelines... |
Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 05 Oct 2011 at 6:49pm
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Thanks for the posts Gemma and Liam. Yes I would agree about the 30 days. I have been trying to work out calculations for projects that I will be working on next year, and one came out at 15 days. Personally, I would rather spend 30 days on this particular project because i am dealing with grass snakes (and slow worms too). I guess that only this time next year we will know if these new guidelines work or not. I'm looking forward to using them and see if they work or not and continuing the debate here. LOL. Now that NE have updated these guidelines, does this mean that the HGBI guidelines will be updated too, as I tend to quote these in a lot of reports. Would love to know peoples thoughts on this and whether we can still quote the HGBI guidelines in reports. Glad to hear RobertV that your friend is in tune with reptiles and amphibians. This is actually the best way and by the sound of things, he is doing everything that he can. That has to be good news for the reptiles and wildlife. |
Posted By: herpetologic2
Date Posted: 05 Oct 2011 at 8:33pm
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The HGBI guidance is now defunct as it would be the Natural England guidelines which we should quote as they go further and have excellent published objectives and guidance which LA and others should now follow. I have been working on past projects on the calculations - you have to remember that this assumes you use thousands of felts/tins per hectare (I wonder who proposed that impractical money generating idea?) and starting in the optimal time of year starting in April. One project I had a calculation of 26 days starting in April the size of the site was 0.7ha and the population size was medium with exceptional habitat - though you cannot have that combination - the habitat was really good largely undisturbed grassland - we caught 747 lizards off the site 247 adults and the rest sub adults and neonates. We carried out the translocation over 50 days at the end of the year. We cleared the site though we were into the autumn so we thought we would have had more animals to get but we carried out a destructive search and managed to find 7 lizards. If we had killed those animals would it have been illegal?
------------- Report your sightings to the Record Pool http://recordpool.org.uk" rel="nofollow - http://arguk.org/recording |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 05 Oct 2011 at 11:41pm
I can see numerous problems with that approach. How would one define 80%? When does one become sure that it is 80% not 10% of the population? We've already discussed how difficult it is to determine site depletion, determining 80% would be even harder! (and very open to abuse by the not so concerned out there). It also rather misses the point that the WCA is the legislation that causes reptile mitigation to occur. I don't see we want a situation where it is OK to not finish the job to divert funds. The model holds for sure for common lizard and slow-worm that we generally see the bulk of numbers towards the start of capture work, not such a good model for adder and grass snake though in my experience. I wouldn't want a situation for example where I carried out vegetation clearance to 'flush' grass snakes, whilst knowing that 20% of the common lizard population was still onsite and would be at the mercy of corvids, when I could have caught them but didn't! I doubt the money would actually go towards habitat creation would it? It would just save client cost and time in reality? I've really had no problems getting a lot of habitat creation done. Generally clients accept our approach of we want x,y.z done at the receptor site and in-situ and some have even adopted what they learnt to general practice which is a good result. Much of what can actually be achieved depends on how persuasive one is. I stated above it isn't rocket science and it certainly doesn't have to be expensive, that is from actual experience. I will concede I tend to shy away from any project that looks like a 'total loss' type of job and many of my past clients controlled considerable land banks where we could get habitat creation carried out. There have even been a few who carried out works to benefit existing reptile populations for sites we surveyed as potential receptor sites and found them occupied! I think that is where the real gains in these terms are, in awareness. At the end of the day the real problem the widespread reptiles face in the wider countryside is intensive farming. That is what needs to be reviewed for all UK wildlife. I don't think the funds should come from reducing capture effort during reptile mitigation, there should be some serious government funding to put in 'green highways' throughout the UK. Giving some of the land currently used for arable farming back to wildlife and the human population gets my vote. I quite honestly sometimes feel a little sorry for developers who have to carry the can because their brown field sites are the only suitable habitat left for the widespread reptiles. Many wildlife trusts don't have a great record regarding sensitivity towards reptiles either! The new guidelines as Jon mentioned have taken a good approach, net loses should not now be allowed. That is certainly a step forward. The true savior though will be putting water and meadows back in the British countryside, rather than subsidised arable crops! (Whilst I still draw breath I can still dream!). I'm not sure though if developers should be footing the bill and I'm certainly not sure that reptiles should pay the price with their lives when it is quite reasonable to capture the vast majority of them as Jon's example illustrates. I do actually see where you are coming from though, on darker days I have often wondered if there is any point in translocating reptiles at all,- it's a broken train set which I think many of us just do our best with. I guess at the end of the day I'm very suspicious that any reduction in capture effort in an 'agreed' way would actually benefit reptiles at all in the long-term. The current situation might not be ideal but until we see a complete change in views on land use and ownership I can't really see much of a way to improve things.
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Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 06 Oct 2011 at 1:14am
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Well Jon if you had started in April and not late in the season maybe 26 days would have been sufficient, you wouldn't have had to catch all those neos. We did a job a few years back where we had most of the site in a relatively optimum time to remove gravid animals. One area we couldn't get access to because of ongoing H&S issues. When we did get on it and considering it was much smaller than other areas of the site, it actually did take about twice the effort to clear it because the lizards had 'popped'. Which almost exactly compares to your numbers of 26 and 50 days. Perhaps the new tables are actually magic and really work? Anyone noticed that we still have not had an official input from NE on this thread? Are they hoping that most people will just accept the guidelines and work with them the best they can? I'll be honest though, I've mixed feelings about Autumn translocation. I kind of fear moving animals too late, there is also the risk of seasonal changes giving false indication of depletion. I have though on two occasions translocated animals to around the first week of October. We found as you did Jon that during destructive search there were remarkably few animals left of the site. Big factor could be refuge use at this time. Longer occupancy relating to greater capture success perhaps? I would rather not catch neos, but I think it is an area that should be studied more. It is often a case that timing is controlled by many factors and always getting the ideal 'slot' for mitigation is as much luck as design when looking at the greater picture. I've no doubt late mitigation involves more effort (a good lever on the client to get the timing earlier and avoid having to capture neos), though I've also a feeling that the capture work can actually be very effective at this time of year too. I've also seen on more than one occasion capture work started in April through May which conveniently finished at the start of June when temperatures were soaring. I wonder if such a short window is really that reliable when it ends in possible unfavourable weather conditions just as capable of giving a false indication of depletion as cooler weather at the end of the season?
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Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 06 Oct 2011 at 11:21pm
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On the subject of timing of translocations, I avoid october completely as it damages animals, and there is no guarantee that the reptiles will survive the winter on the receptor site. My preference is always for April to late June and again in late August to end of September. April is always my first preference as young animals won't be around yet, so catching these is not a problem. Sometimes it is not always possible to undertake the mitigation in April and will opt for the Aug to September window. I'm looking forward, like I said before, to using these calculations and seeing if they actually do work or not. This is the only way that we are going to see if the guidelines really work or not. I'm a bit surprised that NE haven't responded very much to this thread too, or even the authors of the publication (if they are on here, which sure they must be). |
Posted By: sussexecology
Date Posted: 06 Oct 2011 at 11:27pm
Thanks Jon for this. |
Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 07 Oct 2011 at 7:44am
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Perhaps I should note that in both cases of moving animals in October, it was in-situ mitigation and the animals were being moved out of works areas to known hibernacula. We couldn't really leave them on the wrong side of the fence for the winter!
The way we intend to proceed for survey and mitigation capture effort is to work as usual and also undertake the calculations from the new guidelines for comparison. I suspect our estimate effort will not always align, but l agree that it may be a case of working with the guidelines next year, there doesn't seem to have been any moves from NE such as putting DRAFT on the current document. I'm sure this thread is being read, I won't hold my breath for an official response though. There is still the problem of refuge density which has been brought up but it does have the wording 'suitable' habitat so I might just take that as meaning optimal positioning of refuges for presence/absence survey. The current figure just seems far too high. In fact too many refuges confuses our current method of calculating mitigation effort as generally high counts on single refuges can be a good indication of localised population density, it's always been a good indicator in the past. The reports will then act as feedback. But as NE only discuss these things during coffee breaks at the HWM, I wonder if it will be worth it.
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Posted By: MancD
Date Posted: 07 Oct 2011 at 3:15pm
I'm not sure what sort of "response" you are expecting Gemma, you can't expect Natural England to be trawling internet forums for reaction to its publications especially given the current climate of resource pressures. I only visit here through my interest in herps rather than in any official capacity for my employer. As I mentioned earlier, if you provide feedback to NE, we are obliged to respond so if you have any comments you should send them direct to NE rather than waiting for them to be found.
NE will have a new Amphibian and Reptile Species Specialist shortly and I expect part of that role will be dealing with any feedback on the guidelines.
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Posted By: GemmaJF
Date Posted: 07 Oct 2011 at 4:34pm
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I don't think those involved in the input and publication of this document would need to trawl far to find this thread. It may well do to be a faceless organisation at times, but we know (well at least I do now) who was involved. Some comment regarding why such a huge number of refuges for presence/absence was decided would be of interest at least, as well as some comment on the 'tables'. Perhaps the fact we have several County Recorders and working consultants calling for DRAFT to be put on the document. is worthy of comment from someone actually involved at NE or in the input of the document? Or perhaps you think your employers are above such 'internet' type interactions with their end users.
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Posted By: Matt Smith
Date Posted: 09 Oct 2011 at 3:01pm
It does seem to me that there is quite a bit of feedback regarding the guidelines happening on this forum. If and when NE does have a new Reptile and Amphibian Specialist, I would certainly expect them to be looking at these forums from time to time. Even if the feedback here is "unofficial", at the very least I would expect a post along the lines of "Hi - I'm the new NE Herp specialist - this discussion is interesting and I have taken note of the points raised. Please copy me in to any further discussion via an E-mail". I don't expect NE to conduct a "defense" of the new guidelines in an open forum like this, but it is an excellent place to reach alot of people easily, and the discussion among ourselves here is pulling up new points and considerations as it develops. Sometimes, it is easier and quicker to discuss things here rather than having to sit and generate a more "formal" e-mail to NE along the lines of "Point 1 - No. of mats. Point 2 - Capture Effort tables". However, if NE only consider feedback to be that which is sent directly into the person concerned, then they need to say so, and also to come back to us. Feedback should not ne a one way thing, there are quite a few questions that have been raised here that we would like answers to. Even if it means someone reposts a copy of an "official NE E-mail" here then that is something. ------------- Independent Consultant Ecologist ¦ Berkshire County Herp Recorder |